Infy hands out special bonuses to top performing employees, to hire 20k in 2016-17

India's second-largest software exporter Infosys has started handing out special bonuses and incentives to top-performing employees and sales executives — on top of their regular salaries and incentives.Anirban Sen | ET Bureau | November 13, 2015, 12:23 IST

BENGALURU: India's second-largest software exporter Infosys has started handing out special bonuses and incentives to top-performing employees and sales executives — on top of their regular salaries and incentives — and plans to hire about 20,000 engineering graduates from campuses in financial year 2016-17, roughly similar to the number of campus offers it has made this year, a top company executive said.

"What we are trying to experiment with is — we have a regular compensation structure which is base plus bonus. And bonus component depends on how the company and individual has performed. So, that structure will continue — in addition, every quarter based on what we think is imperative, we're experimenting (with something new) and this changes every quarter. So suppose, this quarter there is an important metric, we are announcing a (separate) incentive," said Infosys chief operating officer UB Pravin Rao in an interview on Thursday.

Rao said this special incentive structure has been put in place this financial year to help the company meet its short-term quarterly targets more effectively. This quarter, for instance, Infosys is incentivising its sales organisation on how well they manage to sell the company's newly-launched Aikido line of services.

"We're saying, if you meet X million of revenue, then we'll clear this kitty and over and above the net, we'll give them this much. So those are incremental bonuses or incentive schemes that we've come up with, just to make sure that there is more alignment to some of the short-term things we're trying to do, in addition to regular bonuses which is based on overall performance," Rao told ET.

"This half, the focus is more on selling our new Aikido services. So, we're trying to incentivise people on that. So whoever does X million of revenue, over the next 6 months, there is a separate kitty that is given out to them," he added.

Infosys is also in early discussions internally to potentially revamp its current startup incubator program and potentially launch an accelerator-like program within the company for startups, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said, requesting anonymity. Rao, however, said that these talks were at a "very early stage" and the company has not yet figured out what shape and form it will take finally. "On the accelerator thing, it's still early days. It has not reached a stage where we can conclude on anything. We're in very early stages of conversations — nothing more to add at this stage.

These discussions have been there in terms of setting up an accelerator, but it's still at a very early stage. What shape and form it will take, it's too early to comment on that. Right now the focus is on investing in attractive startups," said Rao, who is also on the board of Infosys and has been with the company for nearly three decades.

Infosys has also covered roughly about 80% of the 8,500 master projects that the company undertakes with its newly-launched Zero Distance initiative, which aims to bring a more innovative problem-solving approach to an average outsourcing project.

Rao also said that Infosys is seeing intense competitiveness on pricing in traditional bread-and-butter outsourcing areas and conceded that the company has been forced to be flexible with pricing for some select clients.

"It's only a deal (specific) thing. Because at a client level, there are very few cases where clients are asking for any rate cut. In the past, you had instances of giving discounts and rate cuts — that pressure we are not seeing. Typically we are very selective with clients, we go after only Fortune 2000 companies, so whenever we have an opportunity in our client space and if it's a large deal, we try to be as aggressive as our competition is and try to win that," said Rao.

Sponsored Stories

Subscribe ETCIO Newsletter

Prasad Rai, Vice President, Applications, Oracle India speaks on how enterprise users can now migrate their ERP application to its cloud platform in a smarter, speedier and safer manner, and how it could be the last upgrade they will ever do.